Free Lemons 02 A Touch of Danger by Grant Fieldgrove

little cubicle and waited. There was a small table, a thick pane of glass and of course, a telephone in front of us. Actually, there were two phones on our side and one on the prisoner’s side. While we waited, I tried to listen to other peoples conversations without much luck. I was already bored and my mind wandered to an old episode of The Adventures of Superman where Clark and Lois visit a man in prison, just like this, and Clark figures out the man is innocent and telling the truth by using his super-hearing and noticing the man’s heartbeat never speeding up while talking. I hoped I would be able to deduce something similar here. It was time to find out.
    A buzzer sounded and a guard on the other side of the glass opened up a door and out stepped a slender woman with blond hair, dressed in her prison outfit. I assumed it was our girl even though I have never seen a picture of her. My assumptions were correct. Emma Ricks took a seat directly across from us on the other side of the glass and picked up the phone. I did the same.
    “Who the fuck are you?” she asked.
    “Now that’s my kind of greeting,” I said. “Ms. Ricks, my name is Archie Lemons and this is my partner Elise Reynolds.”
    “Okay,” she said. “What the fuck do you want?”
    Elise had picked up the other phone and answered the question. “Mr. Ricks, we are here in regards to your case that landed you here. No one is with us and we’re not working with the police on this, we’re actually freelancing this case.”
    I wasn’t sure if freelancing was the correct term she needed to use, but I let it go. She continued.
    “We have reason to believe the man you were stalking may not be as innocent as everyone seems to think and we were wondering if you could shed a little light on your side of the story for us.”
    Shed a little light? Was that right? Shine? I don’t know. I let it go, again.
    “Yeah, well,” Emma said, “what do you want to know? I’ve told them everything, the truth, and no one believed a goddamn word I said and now I’m here.”
    “I know that, Ms. Ricks. And like Elise here said, we want your side of the story. We didn’t follow this trail at all and have no idea. We just want to hear what happened.”
    “Fine. This was years ago, though,” she said. “I had the hots for Brad Jackson, as I’m sure you know. Shit got out of hand and I actually found out where he lived and started showing up at his house and following him around. I’ve admitted to this several time. I wanted him to love me. I know it may sound silly to you, but to me it felt so real. The love I had for him.”
    “Did you hold any animosity towards his wife?” Elise asked.
    “I can’t say that I didn’t, that would be a lie,” she said. “She was in the position that I wanted to be in. I hated her without ever even meeting her. Some nights I would park outside of their house and just stare, hoping to catch a glimpse of Brad. They had this big beautiful house out near Beverly Hills. Sometimes I would see his wife leave and I would fantasize about getting out of the car and jumping her, then go and confess my love to Brad and he would see that his wife was all wrong for him and he belonged with me.”
    “You admitted to all of this in court?” I asked.
    “Stupidly, yes,” she answered. “I had this crazy belief that justice would prevail and I would be found innocent, like I am. However, it didn’t really pan out for me. The jury took less than thirty minutes to convict me. I never even stood a chance. I had shitty defense and I was convicted before the trail even started.
    “Brad Jackson was a superstar, everyone loved him, and getting an unbiased jury was all but impossible. All anyone knew was that his precious wife was stolen from him and I was the most obvious fall guy for it, so it was all unloaded on me and all of the sudden I was the worst person in the world. No matter what shitty defense my piece of shit lawyer provided for me,